Enterprise management systems, such as the Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) available from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., enable customers to manage many different components within their enterprises, including, but not limited to: servers, applications, devices, services, sites, desktops, and line of business applications. The list of managed components continues to grow and change constantly. With this growth and expansion, it becomes an increasing challenge to manage and usefully represent the state and status of each managed component. Another challenge arises in discovering, managing, and updating the many relationships between these managed elements.